D vs Java

[David Medlock]

Don Clugston wrote:

<snip>

>>
>> I couldn't have said it better myself. :)
>>
>> A pleasant side-effect from all this is that it may help increase 
>> code-mobility
>> across the windows/linux/mac divide, for any dynamic D binaries (x86 
>> object
>> files that comply with the D ABI) that are free from OS-specific code.
>> Provided, that's just theory for now, but it should be possible.  
>> While that's
>> not "run-everywhere", it gets you far enough to make certain styles of 
>> plugin
>> architectures very possible.
>>
>> - EricAnderton at yahoo
> 
> 
> In digitalmars.com digitalmars.D:35128, Walter said of the difference in 
> reals between Linux and Windows:
> 
>  > > pragma's DDL lets you (to some extent) mix Linux and Windows .objs.
>  > > Eventually, we may need some way to deal with the different padding.
> 
> I think it's a pipe dream to expect to be able to mix obj files between
> operating systems. The 96 bit thing is far from the only difference.
> 
> Now, he's quite knowledgeable, but I'd love to prove him wrong on this 
> one. I find it hard to believe that it would be impossible. I guess the 
> question is, will the subset of functionality that works be sufficient 
> to be useful? I guess we won't know until the ELF side is working.
> 


One thing I would rather see in portable object formats is hierarchical 
formats rather than linear ones.  Code is inherently tree-like, yet Java 
byte codes(and other binaries) are in linear, stack based format.

The slim binaries idea from Oberon used tree byte codes, and it compiled 
  modules it loaded on the fly!

-DavidM